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Comment by iamben | Hacker News Reader

Admittedly it's been a long time since this has been something I've had to worry about - but back when I just asked for it to be cut out the contract. Generally everyone was fine with it, especially when you explain "it's how I learn to do stuff that benefits me in the office". I think the general worry was twofold - that a) working on my own stuff would mean I didn't get my actual job done, and b) that working on my own stuff would mean I leave sooner and it's costly to pay for recruiters and refill roles.

It probably helps explaining what sort of side projects you do, how much time they take, your 'real' job pays for you to live and this is the nerdy equivalent to playing 5-a-side football or watching movies.

Anecdotally a (very skilled) dev friend recently got a job with a (UK) challenger bank and was required to sign a similar thing, they were happy to carve add exceptions for a couple of things he was working on.

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Yes. Ask. I've never had an employer insist on anything beyond "Let your line manager know about projects you're doing so they can judge if it's a conflict", but left to their own devices the standard contract they've got will reject everything 'cos that is safer for them.

Same for other contract conditions. Had to have one previous employer strike their "usual place of work" condition because it was inappropriate for me, they knew it when they hired me and the people who hired me wouldn't have tried to enforce it, but it's standard text. If I sign it some new manager comes along later and gets to enforce it, no reason to allow that so I had them revise the contract.

In the UK, and I think maybe the US too, the employer actually benefits in a small way if employees get them to tweak the contract. If a court sees the contract as a "take it or leave it" situation - like when you buy a hamburger, you don't get to negotiate the terms of that deal, either buy a hamburger or don't buy a hamburger - then it automatically treats any ambiguity in your favour. But once you negotiate a different text, you had the chance to read that contract, if you thought something was unclear you could have fixed that, so now any defects are as much your fault as the employers.

Making sure the "usual place of work" being head office is struck out is vitally important if you're working remotely in the UK, otherwise you're no longer able to claim travel to the office as an expense due to tax law.

This right here. Tell them to carve it out or even return a signed version where you've done the redactions yourself. Tell them that non-work time is your own time and that previous employers have been willing to waive this requirement without issue.

I've managed to have it crossed out at 3 of my most recent employers.

Getting off on a tangent but crossing something out on a contract is something I've never understood. In my experience most are emailed digitally, and they may even just want the signature page. Even if they have the whole thing they can just take the signature page and append it to an unmodified contract. I'm speaking about job offers, apartment leases, and so on.

the way it should be done is not just crossing it out. You also add the signatures of both sides to the redaction. One copy stays with you, the other with the employer.

In digital terms, it's easier just to amend the whole file.

If they take your signature and attach it to a different document, that's called fraud. Of course you'd have to prove it.

First, start actually printing out contracts to execute them. It's old fashioned, and you probably don't have a printer (Staples does). But it preserves your right to cross things out and makes it clear that there is an authoritative "wet ink" copy that you specifically agreed to, not some vague digital assent to whatever they sent.

Also get in the habit of initialing each page of a contract, regardless of whether there is a space asking you to or not. A lack of initials then becomes evidence that a given page is not from a contract you signed.

And you need to keep a copy of what you've executed for your own long-term records. It's ultimately your word against theirs. Yes, this is another pain in the ass for the average 20-something, but if you care about preserving your rights you have to play their shitty game.

Relatedly, I'd love to find (or design) some "legalhash" algorithm that would canonicalize typeset documents into a reliable digital hash. I'm imagining a small set of characters, all whitespace folded into a single space, etc. This would capture the legal intent but leave everything else behind (wouldn't work for contracts with diagrams etc). You'd then put the hash of the whole document on the signature/notarization page, to authenticate the prior pages.

Nowadays many contracts are signed with a system like the one you describe. I've signed a couple of leases this way, all in a web browser. This makes it even harder since you can't print it out and cross out anything, then sign and give it back.

You can often still print those out, execute it, scan it, and email it back.

Depending on the context, it's possible to just completely ignore them (eg a non-compete that a job wants you to sign after you've already been hired).

You can also directly ask for your changes, as discussed elsewhere.

Ultimately, if someone tries to spring an unreasonable contract of adhesion on you at the last minute, the right answer is to blame them for disrupting the negotiation. Tell them it's unacceptable for them to have wasted your time, and look around for a better option.

A contract isn't the signed piece of paper, it's a "meeting of minds", two legal entities (e.g. a corporation and a human) reach a common understanding in which things of value are exchanged. Working for money for example. In some places there may be a law explicitly requiring that for employment you're entitled to a piece of paper setting out the terms, but it remains the case that contracts of employment come into existence as a result of this meeting of minds not the piece of paper.

For example once when I was young I was hired by the following process. I see on the TV news that a chip fab I've worked in caught fire, damaging nearby buildings. There are a lot of fire engines but the blaze is under control. Then I get a phone call from a friend, "Mountbatten is on fire". "I saw that". "We're getting Zepler back tomorrow, once structural engineers sign off on it - can you be there 0900 sharp to salvage stuff and get the network back up?". "Can do. See you tomorrow".

No interview. No pieces of paper. No salary negotiation. But that's an employment contract, just some of the details not determined until later. I actually genuinely don't remember how long I worked that gig, it was a lot of fun although pretty different from what I do these days.

In court, forging evidence by relating a signature page to the wrong document so they can then lie to a court about it is not OK - their lawyers aren't going to want to have anything to do with that idea. Contrariwise, if you have an email back-and-forth, or even just a friend who remembers you talking about the change, you're in a good place because your story makes sense and the employer's story does not.

But mostly you aren't going to be in court. If you're confident the employer would try to actually fuck you over, and you're in the sort of work where you get to strike contract terms, walk away from that job. Nobody needs that.

This is the truth right here. I've never signed an IP assignment agreement that applied outside of work hours and company equipment in my entire career. I've simply refused to do so, and made it a point of negotiation. If there's a company I really wanted to work for, at times I gave up some salary for this flexibility, but generally speaking it wasn't even an issue. Overly broad employment contracts are common-place in the US, because most people never challenge it. It's very much an "implication" situation, because of the power dynamic between employee and employer. Take the power back, read contracts, and don't sign if you disagree. There's always room to negotiate.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to say things I create during work hours, or in the office, or with company equipment belong to the company. On the flip-side, once you are no longer "at work" (whatever that means in your case) and on your own equipment, that is none of the company's business whatsoever. If you agree to it though, that's on you.

Just to add an anecdote: all large companies I have worked for required IP assignment, and it was NOT negotiable. You can ask for it to be removed and they will say no. You can try the “strike it out and initial” move, but the agreement will come back in about a week with a stern letter from legal saying “sign it unmodified or GTFO”.

It is likely more negotiable in smaller companies that do not have huge, inflexible employment agreements.

It's not clear whether you're referring to imaginary property assignment clauses in general, or specifically to imaginary property assignment outside of the job. Of course companies require imaginary property assignment for the work they're paying you to do, and that's entirely reasonable. It's not reasonable for them to also claim ownership over everything you do in your personal life (eg side projects, emails to friends, cooking recipes).

> It's not reasonable for them to also claim ownership over everything you do in your personal life

Yes, that’s what I’m talking about. I agree it’s not reasonable, but just try negotiating your employment agreement terms with a $1T company, and let me know how it goes!

I recently accepted a job offer at one of the big tech companies and they would not sever that portion of the contract. So while it doesn't hurt to ask, they might not accommodate you.

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